Textile Cartographies
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Textile Cartographies
​​Bridge To Nowhere Arts Association Incorporated, Port Pirie. South Australia 2021-2025

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​Artists from Bridge To Nowhere Arts Assoc Inc live in a broad geographical area of regional South Australia so distance, current economic strain and busy life styles challenge get together frequency. 

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​​Coordinators:  Cheryl Fischer & Melanie Sarantou.
​Artists from Bridge To Nowhere Arts Assoc Inc
Port Pirie, South Australia

UPDATE 2025: ​PATHWAYS TO PEACE

PATHWAYS TO PEACE Featuring:



• MARY BATEMAN
• JUANITA BLUE
• ERICA BROWN
• ALEX COLLINS
• TESSA COLLINS
• KYLIE COOMBLAS
• KYLIE DINNING
• WENDY DUNNE
• KENNETH FISCHER
• CHERYL FISCHER
• BEVERLEY FRENSHAM
• IRIS PETITT
• SANDRA STEPHENS

Artist(s) experience: 
Medium: ceramics, craft, drawing, installation, jewellery, mixed media, painting, performance, sculpture, sound textiles,

During 2025 Members of BTNArts have been asking - where is peace? Is it: 
  • Peace of Mind,
  •  Mindfulness through arts practice
  •  Love, serenity, or found in nature
  •  Found in the symbols of the Dove or the Olive Branch,
  •  Discovered within music
  •  Within Freedom of choice, life-style, community, and unity
  •  In the Possibility of World Peace
  • Experienced around water, hills or trees
  • Felt as the moon waxes and wanes with the seasons
  • Walking, quietly meditating, alone or with others
  • Is it in the freedom of expression, language, and dress?

Where is peace? We have through our activities - including 5 projects, been discovering different peaceful times. Our group has painted it's own pathway - a 7metre labyrinth which can be used inside or out.
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SALA EXHIBITION
Venue: ARTS NOW HERE @ WARNERTOWN
​Friday 8th, 15, 22, 29th August; Saturday 9th, 16, 23 August 2025

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​The Installation expresses both our individual and group journeys towards inner peace and a peaceful community. Members combine to reach a level of peaceful escape by designing works encompassing the journey towards inner peace for members, community and visitors alike.
​The exhibition is diverse with paintings, mosaics, a bottle top mosaic, macrame, textiles and score a Labyrinth Soundscape called FRITH. 
BTNArts members have a Mosaic Memorial Table to view, an International Cartography Project - continuing since 2022, a Flinders Songs Project and Textile Tuesday - commenced April, 2025.

Activities during the Exhibition 

• Stories Behind The Songs ( Artist Talk)
• BUILD YOUR OWN HAND-HELD LABYRINTH ( workshop)
• POETRY, WRITING & GAMES WITH AFTERNOON TEA, Kylie Dinning ( workshop)
• MYSTERY BUS TOUR - the Arts
​• LABYRINTH - a small group experience



SALA EXHIBITION: Call for Project Coordinators
​Please send your squares about PATHWAYS TO PEACE to BRIDGE TO NOWHERE ARTS ASSOCIATION INC until July 2025. 
Contact the coordinator. 

UPDATE 24

​In 2021 members of this collective created a beautiful arts centre in a disused sports oval and hall which they lovingly restored and furnished complete with air conditioning in 2023.
While musicians meet weekly for tutorials and practice, visual artists mainly work off in their own homes and come together for occasional workshops and exhibitions, culminating in SALA (South Australian Living Artists) exhibition in August each year. 
In 2022, we developed a combined music and visual arts Musical Carpet using the original idea of the large blanket squares before developing the 10 x 10 exhibition.
At the beginning of 2024, artists are just beginning to formulate their theme for exhibitions.  Initial thoughts are around concern for the impact of humans on the world’s natural environments.  In their art work, they are beginning to describe their love and concern for nature in “Heart Centred Art”, “Art from the Heart”, and “The Heart of the Matter” (Quote “Beverley Frensham, 2024).  While the notion of peacefulness will also captured in visual depictions of their home environments, both rural town life (home gardens) and bush settings. Members have also included their prayer for peace and a salute to forgotten Australian women – including their mothers, sisters, aunts and cousins.Thus, for Textile Cartographies and SALA Exhibitions, members are concentrating on the concern for the impact of human behaviour on environments and invite participating countries to send 10 x 10 contributions to our exhibition in April 2024. 


 ACTION ART GROUP PROJECT – CARTOGRAPHY 2021 – 2023”  Telling Stories Through Art  

 Our Community Art Group will work together to learn and create different methods of expressing ideas, recording observations and telling stories through art. The group is interested in “mapping” as a way to look at the history of your own place, a town, or a region that you identify with. It could say something about the environment, social aspects or about a Country. ​
The group was interested in people’s narratives in the form of written story, poem or song about the environment and arts experience on their wellbeing.  They started with the following questions to organize the work and to invite the others to the collective exhibition during the  South Australian Living Artists Festival and the regional Brush With Art - Artists of the Flinders Ranges Exhibition:


Country​

 where do we live – a map, a view, a visualisation – How do we
live here? Why do we live here?  How do we feel about our country?

Environment: ​

What we see?   What we love?

Culture: ​

What we do? What we believe in?  Why? Where do we come from? Where are we heading?

During 12 months the group conducted several workshops experimenting  visual arts materials and techniques  and  played music.  They experimented with textiles using   fabric paints, fabric pastels, embroidery thread, sewing machine & thread, felted alpaca on muslin and trying techniques such as felting, embroidery, machine sewing; painting and pastel drawing.

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The Process: 2024

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Artists from Bridge To Nowhere Arts Assoc Inc live in a broad geographical area of regional South Australia so distance, current economic strain and busy life styles challenge get together frequency. 
In 2021 members of this collective created a beautiful arts centre in a disused sports oval and hall which they lovingly restored and furnished complete with air conditioning in 2023.
While musicians meet weekly for tutorials and practice, visual artists mainly work off in their own homes and come together for occasional workshops and exhibitions, culminating in SALA (South Australian Living Artists) exhibition in August each year. 
In 2022, we developed a combined music and visual arts Musical Carpet using the original idea of the large blanket squares before developing the 10 x 10 exhibition.

At the beginning of 2024, artists are just beginning to formulate their theme for exhibitions.  Initial thoughts are around concern for the impact of humans on the world’s natural environments.  In their art work, they are beginning to describe their love and concern for nature in “Heart Centred Art”, “Art from the Heart”, and “The Heart of the Matter” (Quote “Beverley Frensham, 2024).  While the notion of peacefulness will also captured in visual depictions of their home environments, both rural town life (home gardens) and bush settings.Members have also included their prayer for peace and a salute to forgotten Australian women – including their mothers, sisters, aunts and cousins.
 
Thus, for Textile Cartographies and SALA Exhibitions, members are concentrating on the concern for the impact of human behaviour on environments and invite participating countries to send 10 x 10 contributions to our exhibition in April 2024. Please remember to print your name and details of the work on the reverse side.  We invite any visitors and other participating countries to contribute as we will continue our display in our venue until the end of the year.
Regards, Cheryl

Sending address:
 
CHERYL FISCHER
SECRETARY
BRIDGE TO NOWHERE ARTS ASSOCIATION INC
PO BOX 712
PORT PIRIE.   SA.   5540
AUSTRALIA
PH:  0405 321 236

 

The Process: 2022

Our Textile Cartographies – Telling Stories Through Art project is progressing steadily in Australia with ongoing music and art/craft workshops occurring each week.  It’s a full-time job for me just advertising, promoting and supporting each activity. At the moment I am Secretary, COVID Warden, Admin Officer, Cleaner, Mouse Catcher, Photographer and music and arts teacher – what a privileged life we Aussies lead.  Members and visitors are beginning to appreciate both the topic and the submissions to the project – in particular we love the notion of creating smaller 10 x 10s. Without this project, some members would never have explored the problem of textile waste in the world and had unwittingly contributed to the problem.  We also loved the videos you sent us.  It gives us an appreciation of how other groups around the world might be operating.    Around our district of Port Pirie, Weeroona Island, Napperby and Warnertown we live in a very dry and harsh environment.  Like others we have experienced both floods and bush fires (2014) and as our land recovers and bushland gradually regenerates birdlife, flora and fauna are beginning to return with more food available.  Our membership comes from very diverse backgrounds with varied interest in the arts so this project has been instrumental in bringing together ideas and shared experiences, skills and knowledge.  We have new members each week joining in so we delight in the freshness this brings. 
Today we have Kumihimo Braiding and next week we have Nuno Felting followed by Needlefelting workshops so it is still a busy month.
We hope soon to have a stitch and chat day to sew up our Musical Carpet which is still in the pinned together draft stage although we have trialled the music successfully on three occasions.
Cheryl Fisher, June 2022

The Stories

  Nukunu Country, Southern Flinders Ranges.  Title:  Sleepy Lizard.  This piece is about caring for environment by reducing waste, not using “Tiligua Rugosa” poisons.  Keep the plants and animals alive.
Katherine Jane Hansen   

“World Calamity” – Title – Look Our World is Melting – painted on heavy card. With the activity of power stations a high level of mercury has been found in polar bears, radio activity in the Arctic marine system has increased and there is mounting threat from toxic industrial chemicals and pesticides in the range of the large predator.  The world’s glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. Glaciers in the Himalaya are retreating faster than any other part of the world.  More than two billion people, 1.3 of the world’s population rely on the Himalayas for their water.  Scientists from World Glacier Monitoring SVC predict 95% of Alane Glaciers could vanish in 100 years due to global warming.  (source not stated).
 
, “From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to now, fossil fuels  ie. Coal, natural gas and crude oil are burned to run cars and trucks, heat homes, business and power factories.   The release of CO2 has escalated due to human activity; all of the above uses are responsible for 98% of Co2 emissions, 24% of methane and 18% of nitrous oxide. In 1997 the U.S.A. emitted 1/5 of the total Global Greenhouse Gases, not to mention China, India and Australia – (source not stated).

Iris Petitt
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“How vines give shade in the garden” Australia, my garden.  This piece is about climate. I recently bought a beautiful daisy bush for my garden. When I planted it out in the sun, the flowers faded from deep red to a pale yellow and were much smaller. When the weather cools,  I will transplant it under the grape vine that I have trained to give shade to part of my garden. With the vine I can grow flowers that would not survive without the shade. I hope my flowers go back to their first colour and size when I’ve transplanted the daisy bush. I printed the vine leaf from a leaf and painted the daisy as it was when I first got it on the leaf, the smaller flowers show the size and colour effect of the sun.   The paint is acrylic paint mixed with textile medium on calico.
​Mary Bateman 
:BABLERS in colour:   Dry Point Print on 300gsm rag paper.  I used the inside of recycled tetra packs to etch my design. Then printed it using Intaglio Inks on my Cold Press Laminator.   The bird is an imagined colourful version of our White Browed Babblers who live among our salt bush on our property at the foot hills of the Flinders Ranges.  It is a very dry area and the birds tend to be a dull grey/brown colour to blend in with the drying vegetation. 
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.... 2 of 10 x 10 were dry point prints on paper water coloured after print was dry.  To highlight the plight of some of our colourful Australian birds and the endangered Yellow Footed Rock Wallerby).

 CHERYL FISCHER:B

The International Exhibition 

We wanted to keep adding to these and display them as part of our SALA and A Brush With Art Festivals on now until October 14th.  We had promised the wall space to local artists but were able to hang the muslin on a steel display where visitors can see both front and back.  We love the envelopes and cards sent with them so have displayed them too.

CHERYL FISCHER:B
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  • Home
    • The Project
    • Contact
  • Groups
    • Get Involved
  • Exhibitions
    • TC Call for exhibitions
    • Past Exhibitions
  • Events
    • Walking Seminars
    • Actions
    • Public Presentations
  • Publications
    • TC catalogues
    • Kit
    • notebook for derives
  • FAQs
    • For Coordinators